London Market Group Aims for More Modernization in 2010

January 22, 2010

The London Market Group (LMG) aims to continue the progress made in 2009 to modernize the London market’s procedures in an effort to maintain London’s competitiveness in the global insurance market.

LMG Chairman Barnabas Hurst-Bannister laid out the marketing organization’s plans for 2010 in a letter to members. “Our plans for 2010 set an ambitious agenda; but one that is necessary if the London subscription market is to maintain its pre-eminence in the global industry in which we now operate,” he wrote.

Hurst-Bannister singled out a “40 percent improvement in a key measure of client satisfaction,” the successful introduction of the Electronic Claims File (ECF), which he said has “halved the end to end transaction time for the average claim,” and the increased use of electronic accounting submissions, which has reduced the average time taken to process premium payments by two days, as significant achievements.

The LMG’s bulletin pointed out that “in excess of 90 percent of all premium submissions are now made electronically. By the end of the second quarter of next year firms will no longer have the ability to submit accounting data to Xchanging [the company that processes the payments] on paper.”

Further plans are being set in place to continue the gradual changeover to electronic processing in the London market in many areas. These include accounting, policy endorsements between brokers and underwriters, and how technology can be employed to speed up and provide more certainty in other areas.

LMG Chairman Paul Jardine commented: “2010 provides a great opportunity for the London market. We have proved we can adopt technology to deliver efficiency to our processing; and we have demonstrated that this can work as well in the front office as the back. Our endorsements plans will take this forward and help us deliver the sorts of benefits to our placing process that ECF has delivered in the claims arena”.

Lloyd’s CEO Richard Ward, added: “We have seen a great improvement in our processes over 2009 and the benefits from our market reform initiatives are more noticeable. The progress made on the Exchange last year means that we have already made a strong start to 2010.”

Source: London Market group – www.londonmarketgroup.co.uk

Topics London

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